


Distant Fire

by corantus



Category: Carol (2015), The Price of Salt - Patricia Highsmith
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, F/F, Lesbians in Space, Space anarchists, Venusian Colonization au, i'm gay and i fucking love space, some smut later on but nothin fancy, something vaguely resembling hard sci fi, space mechanic cate blanchett y'all
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-29
Updated: 2017-01-29
Packaged: 2018-09-20 18:29:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9505421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corantus/pseuds/corantus
Summary: Lowly archivist Therese Belivet works documenting the construction and everyday ongoings of the nascent human colony on Venus; when she's assigned to work with star mechanic Carol Aird some things may be more troubling than they seem.





	

**Author's Note:**

> i love the concept of sky bases on venus as an alternative to martian colonization, which are frankly sick as shit.............i still haven't done a huge amount of research bc this is a silly little side project but it's sci fi so whatever lmao
> 
> therese is my bitter gay avpd princess and i love writing her more than anything a+ protag

 

 

“I don’t think this one will work. Maybe the colorized version?”

Therese sighs and looks down a level, over the curved metal railing, out the window, towards the surface layer of deadly fire and gases a few dozen meters below the base. It’s not very colorful.

The photos she’s taken (which sit on the screen, awaiting judgement) are greyish swirls of clouds with occasional bursts of fire or little black silhouettes of people working on the outside, clunky and alien in their protective gear.

“What color do they think Venus is,” Therese says, and it’s not really a question, because all the images of it that make it back home are milky and golden; they do not bely how grey and inhospitable this place is.

That’s why Therese likes it, or at least likes taking pictures of it.

The colorized version was done by one of the other archivists. It is that milk-gold color everyone on Earth decided Venus was, that they still cling to despite having plenty of people who could stand on its atmosphere and tell them otherwise.

The title of “archivist” is a little ironic given that Therese’s job is mostly to take pretty pictures and footage they can put on the news to show how well the Venusian colony project is doing and convince the taxpayers they aren’t wasting their money.

The lunar and martian colonization projects, centuries ago, had no such sentimentality about the process of conquering planets; now it’s the event of a generation. The forward expansion of humanity. Something to be documented and celebrated.

Therese applied for the job because it was more interesting and paid quite a bit higher than doing wedding photos in Olmons to scrape by, and her solitary nature made this sort of thing easier than it might be for other people to have their entire social circle narrowed down to three hundred people and some rats and tardigrades.

“I think we’ll take the colorized one,” the manager says, tapping away at the screen and sending it off to the communications deck. It’s designed to sound like a real button and it echoes a little in the smooth platinum white walls of the base.

“Since when have you taken anything besides the colorized ones?” Therese says, jokingly. This manager will at least tolerate comments like that. She’s not much for jokes, though. She doesn’t respond to the comment directly.

“Thank you for your continued dedication, Ms. Belivet. Excellent work as always.” She snaps her pen-and-paper planner shut and Therese is quite sure the managers only have those for that very purpose.

Bell-vet, she says. No one on this base ever says it right.

“Thank you,” Therese says, because there isn’t much else to say on this matter. She’ll sort through those photos later and keep the ones she likes, if she likes any of them.

It’s become Therese’s personal vendetta to properly capture the feelings she has while looking at the surface of Venus; what it really looks like, without embellishment, how lonely and vast it is; its fire and its neutrality. The knowledge that standing on its firmament would be the last thing you ever did.

That’s why she’s skipped out on going back to Mars for the time being, or at least part of why. Olmons was a little too big and full of people who couldn’t mind their own business. Richard lived there.

There were a lot of reasons.

* * *

 

“Snubbed on your vision again, huh, Terry?” Richard’s voice crackles out of Therese’s personal computer. Hers is relatively old and shabby (never had the chance to buy a new one before leaving Mars) and the connection isn’t great. It’s like a little fishing wire she wishes she could cut.

“I don’t know, really. Did you get the ones I sent you?”

“I did--what a hellhole,” Richard says.

“It’s nice,” Therese counters, half heartedly mucking about in the editing program on her standard issue tablet. She’s supposed to have a little footage of work being done on the new base expansion cobbled together to be sent away; small people in their heat suits move about and back again when she rewinds and makes cuts.

“You’ve been out this week?” Richard asks. She can hear him frying something nearby.

“A couple of times; I’m still training so I’m only allowed six hours a week or so. They have me covering construction still.”

Getting outside was the height of excitement--it was easy to forget what life was like without ceilings, how open the universe really was.

The altitude the base floated at was chosen specifically because of its Earth-like gravity and pressure levels (Therese had never been to Earth, of course, who had that kind of money these days?) and low cosmic radiation, so all that was necessary was a suit that protected against the extreme heat and sulphuric acid ever-present in the air; tethers and pulleys, some small transport crafts, and a little daring athleticism allowed the residents of the base to move freely outside of it.

It was the mechanics who really made this terrain (or lack thereof) their own--back home the job had held a certain romance in the public eye, these people who were both brilliant technologists and incredible athletes, who lived dangerously and quite often died on the job.

Therese found the men they had working on the Venus base to be completely insufferable. They spent most of their free time drunk or lording their wealth and status over the other workers. The ones from Earth, especially, who’d spent their youth playing around in their parents’ space stations on the weekends, who’d pull out their Phds at the slightest evocation. Harvard this, Kennedy Station that, my father owns such-and-such and knows so-and-so.

None of that mattered to Therese as much as being able to be out there, above her planet, nothing but a thin little pane of glass between her and its reality, to feel the minute taps of minerals and debris hitting against her suit in the wind, a thousand meters of storm below her feet and nothing but a cable holding her back from that distance.

Who needed a degree for that, really?

“When will you be coming home, Terry?” Richard asks. Like the pull of the tether.

“I don’t know, Richard. I’ve got important work to do here.” And it was important, maybe not in the grand scheme, but to her.

“Danny--well, Danny told me,” Richard said, and he was eating whatever he’d been frying, his fork scraping on the plate, “you could’ve taken your time off three months ago and you didn’t? Why’s that? If you need the money, I--”

“It’s not about the money,” Therese says, reflexively, and she wants to kick herself. Kick Danny. He must’ve thought he was doing her a favor to rat her out to Richard like that.

“You’ve been out a year now...that’s longer than I’d like to be away from you,” Richard is pleading, and she wants to find the sentiment sweet, but she finds herself more annoyed than anything.

“Look--Richard, I--” Therese sighs, “If you could be out here you’d understand, it’s, It’s beautiful, being somewhere like this, and I feel like there’s so much I still need to do--”

“Next cycle,” Richard says, with some finality, “I’ll shut up about it if you come home next time your leave comes up? Don’t get me wrong, Terry, I understand.”

He does not understand.

“After the engagement here,” Richard continues, “whenever that is, I was hoping we could go on a trip together. Maybe to Earth, if you’re up for it.”

Everyone tried to go to Earth at least once in their lifetime, like a pilgrimage; Therese would love to go, of course, and in theory she’d love to go with Richard, but there was so much left to be accomplished on Venus. It could wait.

“I don’t know. Maybe,” And Therese doesn’t know, gripped by some sort of unnamed stress that Richard seems to be exacerbating.

“Anyways...call me tomorrow, alright?” Richard smiles at her through the screen, and Therese decides she is charmed by it.

“Alright,” she said.

* * *

 

Therese had thought that ethereal golden color didn’t exist in nature.

Maybe it didn’t, but she saw it, in the crowd of people disembarking onto the base through the airlock--a new shipment of colonists and engineers coming in from Olmons, as they stumbled out dazedly into the open area. They’re probably still adjusting to gravity after their month long voyage here.

The entire population of the base is there, applauding, and Therese does it automatically, scanning the crowd again for wherever the bright spot went. They’re arranged into loose rows to stand in front of a podium where the base director is giving them their orientation pep-talk. They all look like they’re about to fall over and none of them are listening, looking around at their new comrades instead.

That’s when Therese first sees Carol, and Carol sees her.

Therese sees a tired older woman wearing the standard base uniform (blue off-white and indistinct, with the Planetary Coalition logo on the arm) that no one ever wears, that she has chipped red paint on her fingernails (it occurs to Therese that out here no one ever does that, no one ever paints their nails). And her hair, bright blonde and falling around her face in perfectly messy curls--

It’s the same color, the one that’s irked her for months for being too unnaturally beautiful, for concealing the truth of this place. But there it is, like a beacon, and Therese can’t help but stare.

The woman, who Therese would soon know as Carol Aird, looked back.

And the miraculous thing was, Carol smiled. A quirky, defiant sort of smile, like she and Therese were sharing in some secret joke.

Unnatural. Like magic.

Therese felt like she did when she looked down at the surface of Venus and felt the thrill of its proximity; she wanted to hurtle down towards something, and maybe it was her.

Therese managed to nervously smile back before Carol looked back at the speaker.

It was then that Therese noticed she had a mechanic’s gold and white armband and she felt suddenly intimidated.

Of course a woman like that was a mechanic, of course she was. She’d known there would be a couple new ones coming in (that sort of thing was all they talked about here) but they were almost always men, so this was...unexpected.

She hoped the moment meant something, that she’d have the courage to speak to the woman, that she might figure out why a color and a smile drew her in like inexorable gravity.

But not right now. She wasn’t ready.

But she might be, soon.

* * *

 

“How are things with Richard?” Danny asks.

Damn him to hell.

They’re together in the cramped, darkened physical archive room; it’s located in a space between two modules of the station that didn’t quite fit together correctly. There are janitor’s closets on the ship bigger than this. Therese never understood why they might need a physical archive and it just seems like busywork more than anything. The work is mindless enough that she finds herself thinking about the blonde woman again for the fifth time in three days.

Danny also works in the archives, keeping and storing activity logs. It seems unbelievably boring to Therese but Danny seems to enjoy it; he also aggregates the logs into the weekly update articles they post to the Planetary Coalition’s website, but that too seems boring.

He writes novels, too, which Therese has only heard about but never actually read. She doesn’t know if she’s lost out on anything in that regard.

“Fine,” Therese says, stacking printed copies of her photographs into piles, placing the piles in the cabinets of the physical archive, repeating ad nauseum.

“I hope you’re not too mad about. Uh. Y’know.”

She is.

But Danny is more clueless than malicious so she wants to let it slide; worry about more pertinent things.

Like focusing on her work instead of drifting off into speculation about the blonde woman and how she’d smiled at her and what that might mean.

“I’m not...it’s not as if I meant to lie to him, obviously, I just...I need more time here.”

“To do what?”

What indeed.

“It’s this planet, you know?” Therese says, trying to articulate something she herself does not understand, “I have to photograph it. The way it really is.”

Danny gives an affirmative grunt, and Therese knows she cannot explain this to him.

“You sure you aren’t trying to run away from the engagement?”

Therese stops in her tracks; the photo in her hand hovers above the pile.

“I don’t know. I just really don’t know, Danny.”

Danny opens his mouth to say something but is interrupted by the pager bell.

“Archivist 6458, please report to the administration deck,” the mechanical voice says. It repeats itself three times and Therese packs up her things with relish, ready to forgive all those times she’d been paged with ill timing.

“We’re going to talk about this later, aren’t we?” Danny calls after her.

“Maybe,” Therese answers, already a good ways down the hall.

She hates all of the “I don’t knows” and “maybes”. She longs for certainty.

* * *

 

Therese is directed by an aide to Commander Gerhard’s office, which sits directly in the center of the base; it feels like an office building back in Olmons where one might buy insurance or find an accountant.

She comes to a door that reads, in clean block lettering, “Commander Abby Gerhard, Planetary Coalition, Director of Venusian Expansion Project”.

This seems very much like overkill considering only about ten people a year would come here not knowing who Abby Gerhard is. Less than that, by reputation.

Therese can hear two people talking in light tones beyond the door; she can’t make out what they’re saying, but the atmosphere doesn’t seem dangerous.

She still steels herself for a moment before opening the door.

Two things occur to Therese: one, that she should have knocked, and two, she could not have possibly steeled herself enough for what she sees when she enters the office.

The blonde woman is sitting across from Commander Gerhard.

She looks like she was placed there by god himself, the soft yellow lighting of the office making her strange and radiant; she looks a far cry from the jetlagged person Therese had spotted in a crowd, her hair perfectly coiffed, her lips and fingernails a bright red (Therese had almost forgotten there were women like that, and her breath catches in her throat). Her face is still weary but less so. Therese infers that she might look that way all the time.

They were drinking some kind of clear alcohol out of mismatched glasses. The woman had one leg crossed over the other and her mechanic’s jacket was draped over the back of her chair.

If she recognized Therese, she made no indication of it then, her face amicably blank.

“Are you the archivist?” Commander Gerhard asks, clearing her throat.

Therese snaps to attention, embarrassed at herself.

“Yes, I’m archivist 6458, you sent for me?”

“Name?” Gerhard opens the employee database on her tablet. Out of the corner of her eye Therese sees the blonde woman sigh and take a drink.

“Therese Belivet, ma’am.”

“Therese Belivet?” The blonde woman interrupts, and her voice is warm and ragged; deeper with age, but airy like smoke; and she says her name like she’s intrigued, like she’s tasting it. Therese feels suddenly dizzy.

And she pronounces it perfectly.

“Yes,” Therese says, feeling more than a little foolish.

Gerhard coughs again.

“Belivet, this is Carol Aird. One of the new mechanics. We were just catching up, but I think Lieutenant Aird was planning to leave--”

“Oh, just offer her a drink, Abby, it’s rude to just have her stand around; she’s not a servant,” Carol says, motioning for Therese to sit in the chair opposite her.

“Right. Would you like a drink, Belivet?”

It’s eleven am on a Tuesday. But time is irrelevant when you’re on another planet and she doesn’t want to offend Carol, so she accepts.

It’s similar to vodka but with some cloying sweet aftertaste--she prays it isn’t expensive, which it probably is. She watches Carol throw her head back and down the rest of hers and finds herself captivated by her throat.

“So, you’re the archivist, correct?” Gerhard asks again, turning pointedly away from Carol.

“Yes,” Therese repeats, trying to ground herself once again, “management didn’t make it clear what you were asking me to come up for, if you don’t mind my asking.”

“They were recommending you. I seem to remember Robichev saying you were--” Gerhard clears her throat, “‘difficult, but she does good work’. Their words, not mine.”

Which one was Robichev? The bureaucrats all tended to blend together as far as Therese was concerned.

She is difficult, though.

“Well. I try not to be,” Therese says.

“Isn’t that the secret to success? Being difficult about it,” Carol says, eyeing Therese over a glass that has been suspiciously refilled.

“Don’t, Carol,” Gerhard says.

“I’m not,” Carol says.

Therese feels like they’re speaking a language she doesn’t know.

“ _Anyways_ , Lieutenant Aird, here, is new to our mechanic’s corp. Seeing as she is currently the only female mechanic on the Venus project--”

“Oh, you know how they want to make an important event out of everything. It’s obnoxious.”

“--they want this covered extensively. If you catch my meaning, Belivet.”

Six hundred years of women achieving success in industrial civilization and respectability politics never change.

But if Gerhard asks her what she thinks she’s going to ask her, it could mean working with Carol, which seems equal parts exciting and terrifying; but the little glances Carol gives her now are making her nervous. Maybe in a good way.

“I think I do. But what do you want me for?”

Gerhard and Carol share a suddenly serious look. Their rapport seems more complex than Therese could ever know, and when she does later find out what they were talking about and why they chose her the details will be abstract and partial.

But she doesn’t know that now. It just all seems confusing.

“You’re going to be assigned to Lieutenant Aird full-time, essentially,” Gerhard explains, “it doesn’t make sense to have to rotate archivists around her every single week. Logistical nightmare. They told us you’re fast on the tethers, is that right?”

Therese couldn’t really comment on it. She didn’t cling desperately to the base like other archivists did. She wasn’t afraid of the distance, or the space, and she knew the safety equipment would hold out (and she wanted to get close to Venus, to her planet). Speed or talent had nothing to do with it.

“Fast enough, I think.”

“Good. And you’re on the start of a new rotation--” Gerhard stops to read something in her file. That same intense look passes over her face again. Her sharp brow furrows. “Your third? A whole year? And you signed on for another one?”

“Student loans,” Therese says, which is a good stock answer that saves her from having to share uncomfortable information or dig too deeply into her own motivations.

“You’ve been here longer than I have. Jesus. Where did you go, Harvard?”

“Do you like it here, Ms. Belivet?” Carol asks. Every time she says her name it makes Therese want to collapse.

“I do. Quite a lot, actually,” Therese says, and that at least _is_ true.

“Do that on your own time,” Gerhard mutters.

“It’s a conversation, Abby. Maybe you’ve heard of them?” Carol finishes her next drink, and although her cheeks are a little red she doesn’t seem outwardly drunk at all, “besides, if I’m going to have her following me around while I’m trying to work I’d rather we were on good terms with each other.”

Gerhard sighs even more deeply and raggedly.

How long have they known each other? It seems like decades.

“Lieutenant Aird will be settling in the next couple of days; I’ll have your assignment moved and try to get your paperwork in order. Talk to that Greek girl in records.”

She says this as if Therese knows who that is; the assumption that because she’s been on the base so long she must know everyone on it is both common and false.

She knew Danny before coming here and they work together. There’s a certain obligation there, to keep that connection going. A lot of her interpersonal relationships feel that way. But the more he relays information to Richard the less time she wants to spend with him.

“I’ll talk to her,” Therese says.

“Well, that’s that,” Carol says, standing up and leaving her glass on Gerhard’s desk with a little klink. She faces Therese with her hands on her hips in an almost domineering way.

“Is there anything else?” Therese asks, feeling her anxiety about to get the better of her.

“I’m famished. Come to the mess hall with me?” Carol asks, pulling on her jacket.

Therese is too floored to do anything but nod.

As they make their way out the door (Therese following behind Carol, of course) they can hear the shuffling of Gerhard putting things away and pulling tablets out and turning them on with a chorus of electronic notes.

“Careful,” Therese hears Gerhard say, and she’s not quite sure who she’s talking to.

* * *

 


End file.
